On matter, antimatter and the Big Bang Theory

Makoto Fujiwara isn’t afraid to compare himself to the geeky scientists on The Big Bang Theory or make the nerdy boast that his research into antimatter is “boldly going where no one has gone before.”

The TRIUMF physicist, who recently won the Canada’s John C. Polanyi prize for outstanding advances in the natural sciences, is also quick to admit that he once hoped to nickname his research project ALE (antihydrogen laser experiment) to honour his love of beer. That wasn’t acceptable to his collaborators around the world, so he went with the “more serious sounding” ALPHA instead.

Fujiwara is set to give a public lecture on his research at 7 p.m. Friday at Science World, when he plans to reveal the mirror world of antimatter and dispel certain sci-fi misconceptions. He sat down with The Vancouver Sun this week to give readers a primer on his mind-bending obsession. His responses have been edited for length.

Q. What exactly is antimatter?

A. Antimatter is sort of a mirror image of matter. It’s like a twin brother and sister; they have almost exactly the same properties, but they have opposite electric charge. For example, a simple matter atom is the hydrogen atom — proton and electron. Proton has a positive charge, electron has a negative charge. Anti-hydrogen is the antimatter counterpart of the hydrogen atom. It has the opposite charges, so we have an anti-proton, which has a negative charge, and anti-electron, what we call a positron, which has a positive charge.

These are sort of mirror worlds in some sense, which we believe were created in equal quantities when the universe began with the Big Bang. If we look at the universe today, we see very little antimatter, so it’s one of the big mysteries in physics: What happened to antimatter in the universe?

Q. How much antimatter exists in the universe compared to matter?

A. It’s really very little. There’s some natural occurrence very occasionally, but virtually none in any substantial quantities. An interesting thing is that when antimatter and matter meet, they disappear. It’s a reaction we call annihilation. They both disappear into a pure form of energy.

If matter and antimatter are exactly the same and if they were created in equal quantities in the Big Bang, they would eventually find each other and annihilate into energy. There should be nothing left.

The real question we’re trying to ask is, why is there something rather than nothing? Why is there us?

Q. Are there any theories about why there’s so much more matter in the universe?

A. We postulate that maybe there’s a significant enough difference in the properties between matter and antimatter that may have caused this imbalance in the universe.

We know there’s a very subtle difference between matter and antimatter, but we also know that it’s not enough to explain this cosmic imbalance.

What we have been trying to do in the CERN laboratory in Geneva is to artificially create antimatter atoms and then stably confine them in order to study properties and compare properties with the normal, ordinary matter atoms.

Q. How are you trying to solve this mystery?

A. A few years ago we were able to stably confine antimatter atoms for the first time and then have also been able to confine it for as long as 1,000 seconds, which is about 16 minutes. With these long confinement times we’ve been able to start looking at the colour of antimatter. We shoot a beam of microwaves onto antihydrogen atoms and see how that responds.

As we speak, we’re preparing for our first experiments with a laser beam. We want to shoot laser beams onto antimatter atoms to measure its properties.

Recently we have been able to do the first measurement of the electric charge of antihydrogen atoms — this is one of the measurements I’ve wanted to do for a long time. In a few years we also want to see if antimatter falls down in gravity, like a normal matter atom does.

Q. Why study antimatter?

A. As scientists and as humans, we’re interested in origins: how we came about, how we came into existence. So understanding the evolution of the universe from the Big Bang to this date, I think it’s a philosophically important question to ask for humankind.

It also tells you about very deep foundations of the laws of physics. According to currently accepted laws of physics, basic properties like charge or colour between antimatter and matter have to be exactly the same. If we see any difference, then we have to basically rewrite the physics textbook from scratch. It’s so fundamental.

There was a movie called Angels & Demons — I haven’t seen it myself but I understand that they stole antimatter from CERN and then (tried to blow up) the Vatican.

That’s not possible, or at least not in any foreseeable future, meaning maybe within the age of the universe. If we add up all of the antimatter that we have artificially created, maybe it’s enough to boil a cup of coffee.

That’s the biggest misconception, that antimatter is dangerous. It is true that antimatter annihilates with matter particles and gives out high energy particles, but you won’t feel it — you need a very sensitive detector to detect all this.

Q. Is this the kind of stuff you find yourself discussing at dinner parties?

A. People don’t really like to hear about physics, but I love to talk about it, especially when I have a new idea, I’d love to talk about it at a dinner party, but I usually refrain from doing it because I know it kind of bores people.

Sometimes I can’t help it if I’ve had enough alcohol, but I try not to behave like Sheldon Cooper (of TV’s Big Bang Theory) in daily life.

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